Copenhagen, Denmark, August 12, 2013 / B3C newswire / – Nuevolution A/S today announced that it has entered into a scientific collaboration with Duke University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the investigation of the biological mechanism of action of a specified GPCR drug target. The principal investigator for Duke University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is Robert J. Lefkowitz, a Duke Faculty member and HHMI employee and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2012.

During the scientific collaboration, Nuevolution will provide access to its proprietary Chemetics® technology for small molecule drug discovery and both Nuevolution and Lexicon will provide access to selected chemical libraries created using the Chemetics® technology. Within the framework of the collaboration, hundreds of millions of diverse small molecules will be screened in the endeavor to discover compounds with certain novel and unique properties against the GPCR drug target.

“We are excited to enter into this scientific collaboration with the renowned and world-leading scientific group of Dr. Lefkowitz and our dedicated partner Lexicon Pharmaceuticals,” said Thomas Franch, Chief Scientific Officer of Nuevolution A/S. “If successful, this highly challenging project may cast new and very important light on the mechanism of action of GPCRs.”

“We have used the Chemetics technology successfully to identify novel chemotypes for our internal programs and are enthusiastic about exploring the utility of our DNA-tagged libraries of diverse chemical compounds in the screening of GPCRs. We look forward to working with Nuevolution and Dr. Lefkowitz’s team at Duke University on this project,” said Brian P. Zambrowicz, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Lexicon.

About Nuevolution

Nuevolution is a leading small molecule lead discovery company founded in 2001 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has developed Chemetics®, a unique, patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology which represents the ultimate fragment based drug discovery technology. Chemetics® enables rapid synthesis and DNA-tagging of hundreds of millions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds and the efficient screening of these, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented quantity, quality and speed compared to existing drug discovery technologies.

Nuevolution’s library collection currently exceeds 1 billion small molecule compounds and synthetic biologics for screening. Nuevolution partners its technology with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Nuevolution has entered into agreements with Merck & Co., Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Pharma and Boehringer Ingelheim. Nuevolution has also entered into a joint venture consortium between Nuevolution, EpiTherapeutics, ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and Professor Kristian Helin (Biotech Research & Innovation Centre, University of Copenhagen) aiming at discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs against epigenetic factors. This $ 4 million budget project is supported by the Danish High Technology Fund. Nuevolution has demonstrated the power of Chemetics® by identifying highly potent and drug like novel ligands with the potential to address major unmet medical needs across a range of therapeutic areas and target classes.